With his blend of techno and trance having been welcomed on many of the world’s dance floors, Holland’s Marco V was booked to play a date in Damascus earlier this year. Billed as the first Western DJ to visit Syria, those plans were aborted when the trip prompted a number of death threats. A defiant local promoter offered a military escort for the duration of the spinner’s stay, but Marco Verkuylen’s management insisted that it wasn’t a risk worth taking.

‘I thought there was a 90 per cent chance that it was just some idiot,’ says Verkuylen. ‘It was stuff like: “If you come to Syria, you will never see the light of day again,” and “We are going to hurt you very badly”. If someone from somewhere I’m familiar with, such as the UK or Spain, posted that on the internet, I would have shrugged. But in a Middle East country, where that kind of DJ appearance remains unprecedented, it’s a different story.’

It truly saddened Verkuylen. With no political agenda, he believes that his sound has the communicative qualities to successfully cross borders. Furthermore, while many of his peers may celebrate their underground credentials, he would prefer his name to be known by everybody. Despite having taken an uncompromising stance with regards to the music he produces, eschewing fluffy commercial trance for tougher strains, Verkuylen admits that he would love to have No.1 hits all over the world.

Although this hasn’t happened, Marco V’s current global popularity is unquestionable. In DJ Magazine’s annual Top 100 DJs list, he consistently appears in the upper reaches. Voted for by the public, that sort of placing matters to him, too.

‘Of course it does,’ he laughs. ‘If somebody else says it’s unimportant, I don’t believe them. But some DJs are only busy with the list, spending the whole year trying to please as many people as they can online. That’s not the way I want to do things. I believe it should be because people are out hearing you and really responding to your music. It shouldn’t just be because you’ve been reminding them about it all the time.’

Clearly confident in his own abilities, Verkuylen displays humility when insisting that he’s baffled how such skilful DJs as Erick Morillo, Fatboy Slim and Sven Väth lag behind him in such contests.